If you like to buy a horse or to sell one, it would be very useful for you if you measure it first. At first you could think that this task is hard, but it isn’t in truth. Maybe you haven’t done this previously, this is not a horse from horse games that can be overwhelmed for an instance, but like in every other area of interest here are also some tricks that should be applied to make your job much easier.
Most used technique is "hands" measurement, which can be also tricky at first, but you won’t have any problems if you try it out a few times. You would need just a little practice and you’ll be in a condition to measure and make conversion quickly and accurately.
About the required tools, you will only need a soft measuring tape. If preferred, you can buy special measuring devices with hand conversions already on them, but it is not necessary to spend time searching for one, you will learn how to measure with hands very quickly.
Place the horse on concrete or other even surface and square him up. First thing you need to do is to determine where the top of the withers is. It is actually about a small hump on the top of the horse. This hump is placed below the mane, exactly in front of the place where a saddle would pose. The withers are straight in line with the front legs of the horse, if you are looking at him from the side. The telltale hump can be found if you follow the legs straight up.
Place the indicated part of the measuring tape under your foot and measure to the highest part of the withers. It would be useful if you use something straight - maybe a ruler or board or maybe a level to find the correct height on the tape.
The next step is to find the number of inches from the top of the withers to the ground for what you will need to use the measuring tape. The measurement needs to be converted from inches to hands and if you know that one hand is equal to 4 inches, you have to divide the height in inches by 4. If the horse measures 52 inches, divide by 4 so you will get the correct measurement which is 13 hands for example.
Common thing is to remain inches when you divide by 4 and you also need to calculate the hand measurement accurately. If we have a horse with measurement of 59 inches, with dividing by 4 we will get 14, 75 as an answer which corresponds to 14 hands, 75 inches in terms of a horseman. Is desirable to round the 1/2 inch measurements down, so the proper way to write this number would be 14.7 hh. In the language of the measurement it's acceptable to say either, "14 hands, 7 inches hand height," or just "fifteen-two." when spoken.
You should not be confused, don't mix hand height decimal places with fractions - 14.7 hh means 14 hands, 7 inches not 14 and 3/10 hands.
Nov 20, 2011
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